How to turn a landscape video vertical (9:16)
There are two ways to put a landscape recording in a vertical frame: crop it to fill, or show all of it and fill the space with a blur. Both take a few clicks, and the video stays on your computer.
Steps
Open the video
Open the editor and drag the landscape video onto the drop area, or press "Choose a file". It opens on your device. The canvas starts at 9:16 and the video is sized to fill its height, so at first only about the middle third of the picture shows.
Make sure the canvas is vertical
Press "Canvas" in the left panel list; the settings beside it are now the frame itself. Under "Ratio", "Vertical" (9:16) should be chosen. If it is not, press it.
Choose: fill the frame or show all of it
Click the video on the timeline. On the "Video" tab, the row of icon buttons at the top includes "Fill frame" and "Fit to frame" (hover over them to see the names). "Fill frame" covers the whole 9:16 frame and crops the sides. "Fit to frame" keeps the whole picture and leaves empty space above and below it.
If you fitted it: fill the empty space
Press "Canvas" again and under "Background" choose "Blurred fill". The space above and below fills with a blurred, slightly darkened copy of the same video, which looks far better than black bars. "Flat colour" is there if you would rather have a plain colour.
If you filled it: choose what stays in view
Cropping keeps the centre. If the person is off to one side, select the clip, open "Layout" and change "Horizontal" until they are back in frame, or drag the video on the preview. "Scale" zooms in further; used after "Fit to frame", it lets you stop anywhere between showing everything and filling the frame.
Check the edges and export
Under "Canvas", turn on "Safe-area guide". It shades the strips where apps put their buttons and captions, and it is not in the exported video. Keep faces and text out of the shaded parts. Then press "Export" and pick MP4. On the free plan exports go up to 1080p and 3 minutes, without a watermark.
Tips
- One person in the middle: fill. Two people at the edges, a slide or a screen recording: fit, on "Blurred fill".
- Pressing "Fill frame" or "Fit to frame" again resets the scale and position, so it is a quick way back to a clean start.
- On Pro, "All formats" in the export window writes 9:16, 1:1, 4:5 and 16:9 files from the same edit in one go.
Steps last checked against the editor: October 13, 2026
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